Tag Archives: #Taxes

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What The Philadelphia Inquirer told us . . . and what they didn’t.

We have pointed out, several times, that it is illegal to work in the United States unless you are a citizen or have the appropriate legal documents. In the last linked article, referencing a Philadelphia Inquirer sob story about an illegal immigrant identified only by her surname Guzman we pointed out:

Miss Guzman doesn’t have a husband or boyfriend living with her, so there’s (probably) no real, legal financial support there. That leaves four possibilities:

  1. Miss Guzman presented forged documents saying she was eligible to work in the United States, which is a felony;
  2. Miss Guzman’s employer hired her knowing that she did not have the proper documents, which would be a felony by both Miss Guzman and the employer;
  3. Miss Guzman is living off welfare, for which she is ineligible, and would have had to have presented forged documents to the social workers, a felony; or
  4. Miss Guzman has been working for cash, which means she is evading income and Social Security taxes, which is a felony.

Saturday’s Inquirer noted that a lot of the illegals in the City of Brotherly Love are probably engaging in a least some of the time in option number four:

Philly’s gig economy runs on immigrant workers. Now that labor pool is shrinking amid tougher ICE enforcement.

A new analysis by the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia says the city’s gig economy faces a reckoning.

by Jeff Gammage | Saturday, March 28, 2026 | 5:01 AM EDT

Are you waiting longer for the rideshare driver to show up? Or for that burger and fries to be delivered to your door? Does it all cost more?

Here’s part of the reason: stricter immigration enforcement. And not just the arrest and deportation of workers who lack official permission to be in the country, but the fear that those arrests have engendered among others, dissuading them from taking similar gig jobs. That as legal pathways into the country for other immigrant workers have been curtailed.

A new analysis by the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia says the city’s gig economy faces a reckoning. It runs on immigrant workers, but the Trump administration’s effort to carry out the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history is shrinking the labor pool.

“The demand [for gig services] is not going away,” said Jeff Hornstein, executive director of the Economy League. “The fact that we have so many foreign-born workers in this country, and so many of them are under threat, it’s inevitably going to drive costs up or services down.”

There’s more at the original.

So, what is the “gig economy”?

(T)he gig economy is a labor market made up of freelance or part-time workers who work a “gig” to supplement their income or simply work as they wish.

It’s easy to join this labor market because jobs or tasks are usually accepted through an online app or platform.

In the US, the gig economy has provided millions of people with the ability to work independently and is projected to increase in years to come.

Translation: these are people working without regular employment, people paid either in cash (less probably) or by a check, but without deductions withheld for taxes. If paid by check, an employer is supposed to issue them a Form 1099, if the “individual contractor” has been paid more than $600 over the year, showing the amount paid to the individual, but if an individual has six “gigs”, there is no particular reason he could choose to report only three or four. If the individual has not provided a legitimate Social Security or Tax ID number, the government might not be able to track him. Gig jobs like the delivery job Mr Gammage used as an example frequently get tips in cash rather than as part of their bill.

It’s easy to see why an “independent contractor” would under-report. The Social Security/Medicare tax rate in 7.65% for both the employer and employee, but a gig worker who was just paid what he earned is responsible for both, a 15.3% tax on all income received. How many people can pony up 15.3% of their total earnings once a year, in the spring? For every $10.00 they can under-report results in $1.53 in taxes they don’t have to send the Infernal Revenue Service.

For every $1000.00 they can underreport, that’s $153.00 they avoid sending the government. For someone delivering for Door Dash or some other service, $153.00 is probably real money, and that’s an encouragement to cheat.

ICE does not release local figures, but nationally, arrests of immigrants are surging. Those arrests, detentions, and deportations, and the fear among immigrant workers that they could be next, is subtracting people from the labor force. That and the reduction of humanitarian-entry programs and new limits on work sponsorship mean there are simply fewer workers available, as the national, foreign-born labor force has declined by an estimated 750,000 people since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025.

Hmmm. I would have hoped that number would have been higher. As we have previously reported, the Inquirer has reported an illegal immigrant population of between 47,000 and 76,000 people just in Philly.

Mr Gammage’s story was intended to convey to readers that immigration enforcement is pushing up inflation; he might not have intended to point out that the gig workers, which even he pointed out that “Gig platforms are among the last accessible labor markets for undocumented workers, because the E-Verify system generally does not apply there,” might be evading taxes. All it takes is reading his story closely, to see what he told readers, and what he didn’t.

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Now this I can support! Let the counties served by SEPTA pay for SEPTA

While there are all sorts of reports on movement in the Pennsylvania General Assembly on additional funding for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), at least as of this Friday morning writing, no funding agreement has been reached. Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins has paid forward some of the city’s $135 million subsidy, to keep city bus service for schools, but that’s only a stopgap for the system’s projected $213 deficit.

But this story from The Philadelphia Inquirer is at least a little bit better than the notion that the taxpayers throughout the Commonwealth should pay for SEPTA:

Philly’s collar counties are only authorized to tax property. Could SEPTA’s budget crisis change that?

County officials have long sought broader taxing authority. Some say the debate over transit funding could force the issue.

by Katie Bernard | Friday, August 29, 2025 | 5:00 AM EDT

Officials in Philadelphia’s collar counties are hopeful that the monthslong impasse over funding for SEPTA may push lawmakers to consider a change to state tax law they have sought for years.

With many of their residents dependent on SEPTA for daily work commutes and other trips into Philadelphia, officials across the suburban counties — Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks, and Chester — say they are committed to its success, and they contributed more than $30 million to it last year. But the state’s laws, which allow counties to tax only property, prevent them from doing more to support the agency without raising property taxes.

Officials have long asked state lawmakers to grant them the authority to tax wages, sales, or property transfers. Some wonder if the current debate over the beleaguered transit authority may finally push the issue.

“They’re holding up public transit funding for the entire commonwealth,” said Monica Taylor, a Democrat who chairs the Delaware County Council. “All of these things are piling up and coming together, and they haven’t passed a budget. … This is hopefully pushing for the opportunity for people to come back to the table and start talking.”

There’s much more at the original, but you get the drift: the counties want to be able to wring more and more money out of their people.

My position is simple: the people who use SEPTA should be the ones who pay for SEPTA, through a reasonable fare increase of 75¢.[1]Here’s the math! SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the … Continue reading

But, if the government leaders want to keep treating SEPTA not as a public transit system but a welfare agency, frequently welfare for the well-to-do, at least if Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks, and Chester counties start taxing their own residents for a system that is available to them, then the people of Carbon, Cameron, and McKean counties, which do not have access to SEPTA, will not.

Chester, Bucks, Montgomery, and Delaware counties are, respectively, the four wealthiest counties in the Commonwealth.

If those heavily Democrat counties — Philadelphia, Chester, Montgomery, and Delaware counties all voted heavily for then Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff, while President Trump carried Bucks County by the slimmest of margins, 291 votes out of 402,349 total votes cast — want to tax their people more heavily to pay for SEPTA, let them!

The fairest system is for SEPTA riders to pay for SEPTA, but what I have suggested is at least the second most fair system.

References

References
↑1 Here’s the math! SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the largest portion of daily ridership, with 354,820 unlinked trips, or 50% of the total. With 768,291 unlinked passenger trips every day, and a projected operating deficit of $213 million, how much would fares have to increase to cover the deficit? 768,291 x 365 = 280,426,215 trips per year. A $213,000,000 deficit ÷ 280,426,215 daily trips = 75.96¢ per trip which would need to be collected to completely eliminate the projected deficit. Call it a 75¢ per trip added to the fares, just to male collections simpler, and the budget can be brought under control.
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From where will all of this money come?

The biggest issue in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia at the moment is more state funding for the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA, the mass transit agency which run buses, trains, trollies, and subways in the metropolitan area. SEPTA has a projected $213 million deficit, and has instituted significant service cuts to try to keep the operating expenses in line with projected revenues without the aid from Harrisburg for which they’ve been begging. My good friend Daniel Pearson and the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer have been adamant that the Commonwealth must come through with money, or utter disaster will strike. Note how the elevated train comes to destroyed tracks in a tweet from the newspaper!

We noted here that the solution is actually simple: a 75¢ fare hike completely closes SEPTA’s projected deficit.[1]Here’s the math! SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the … Continue reading The newspaper in general, and Mr Pearson specifically, are opposed to further fare increases, pointing out that the base fare has jumped from $2.00 to just under $3.00 since 2018.

But, as the city is desperately looking for money from SEPTA, what else is the Inquirer presenting to readers?

Everywhere you look in the newspaper you’ll find stories of more and more money being spent, and more and more money being demanded, and no one seems willing to ask: from where will all of this money come?

The Transportation Workers Union Local 234 approved a new contract in November of 2024, which included “a 5% pay raise and safety improvements including bulletproof enclosures on buses to protect Bus Operators, upgrades to radios, and fixes to allow uninterrupted communication in tunnels.” That contract expires on November 7th of this year, which means the union will be going back to ask for more money again. From where will this money come?

I get it: the inflation of the Biden economy hit everyone hard, and though inflation started coming down during Mr Biden’s final year in office, the inflated prices never went away. As much as President Trump tries, inflation could come under control, but prices almost never go back down. Everyone is still trying to catch up, but when it’s government spending that is trying to catch up, the taxpayers are the ones who have to shell out. Pennsylvania’s state income tax rate is fairly low, just 3.07%, but the Commonwealth and the localities make up for that by trying to nickel-and-dime people to death on everything else.

Would you believe that the Borough of Jim Thorpe actually requires people to buy a permit, for the price of $5.00, to move into or out of any place in the borough, and that no public or private moving company shall enable such without verifying the moving permit? Violation of such can bring a fine of $600 and possible jail time. $5.00 might not seem like much, but this is an example of the petty ways in which the governments keep trying to stick their grubby hands into people’s pockets.

Philadelphia doesn’t require a move in permit, but charges $25.00 — $50.00 in Center City and University City — for a permit to occupy two street parking spaces for your moving truck.

Someone who looks a lot like me snowblowing in my old neighborhood, December 29, 2012. Does my neighborhood look wealthy to you? Click to enlarge.

Is it any wonder that the Republicans who control the state Senate are reticent to just give and give and give the taxpayers’ dollars to SEPTA and to Philly? Every dollar they give just means the more dollars that will be demanded in the next budget, and while Republicans are reasonably strong throughout the Commonwealth, Philly is as close to a “No Republican” zone as it can get. Do my former neighbors in relatively low-cost, conservative Jim Thorpe[2]Voters in Carbon County gave 66.90% of their votes to Donald Trump, while the voters in Philadelphia and Delaware counties gave 78.57% and 61.15% of their votes, respectively, to Kamala Harris … Continue reading really want to send more of their hard-earned tax dollars to subsidize wealthy inhabitants of Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Lower Merion to take the train to Center City?

When Mr Pearson wrote “Harrisburg can’t let regional factionalism keep them from finding common ground on SEPTA: The stalemate over the state budget has entered a new, fractious phase, pitting lawmakers who represent predominantly rural areas against their counterparts from the commonwealth’s larger cities,” he was noting just how different Philly is from the “predominantly rural areas,” as though that’s a surprise, but his goal was a victory for SEPTA and the “commonwealth’s larger cities” over the rural areas. The people of those predominantly rural areas have expressed their differences at the voting booth, and they expect their elected representatives to vote their interests, not Philadelphia’s, yet the stories listed above show us, show the people of those predominantly rural areas how the commonwealth’s larger cities want to spend and spend and spend. Is it really any surprise that the Republican-controlled state Senate is reluctant to throw more and more and more money to Philly?

References

References
↑1 Here’s the math! SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the largest portion of daily ridership, with 354,820 unlinked trips, or 50% of the total. With 768,291 unlinked passenger trips every day, and a projected operating deficit of $213 million, how much would fares have to increase to cover the deficit? 768,291 x 365 = 280,426,215 trips per year. A $213,000,000 deficit ÷ 280,426,215 daily trips = 75.96¢ per trip which would need to be collected to completely eliminate the projected deficit. Call it a 75¢ per trip added to the fares, just to male collections simpler, and the budget can be brought under control.
↑2 Voters in Carbon County gave 66.90% of their votes to Donald Trump, while the voters in Philadelphia and Delaware counties gave 78.57% and 61.15% of their votes, respectively, to Kamala Harris Emhoff. Both the state Representative, Doyle Heffley, and state Senator, David Argall, for Jim Thorpe, are Republicans.
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Maybe Jeff Bezos could spend some of those tax savings on The Washington Post?

I will admit it: I liked the way that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, to save it when the Graham family were running out of money. Full disclosure: I am a basic digital subscriber to the Post. I have previously said that I appreciated billionaires who bought newspapers, to fail an otherwise failing industry, as long as they understood that losses were inevitable. Sadly, Mr Bezos isn’t too happy with that last part. We have also noted that Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire who bought the Los Angeles Times, with a piddling $5.9 billion to his name, might feel much more pressure than Mr Bezos, current guesstimated net worth of $194.1 billion, in taking $40-$50 million a year losses.

Well, perhaps Mr Bezos can put a little less pressure on the Post, now that he’s made this money-saving move:

Jeff Bezos will save over $600 million in taxes by moving to Miami

by Robert Frank | Monday, February 12, 2024

  • Last year, Bezos announced on Instagram that he was leaving Seattle after nearly 30 years to move to Miami.

  • In 2022 Washington state imposed a new, 7% capital gains tax on sales of stocks or bonds of more than $250,000.

  • Bezos plans to unload 50 million shares of Amazon before Jan. 31, 2025. Posting those sales in Florida will save him at least $610 million.

Jeff Bezos’ $2 billion stock sale last week came with an added perk: no state taxes.

Last year, Bezos announced on Instagram that he was leaving Seattle after nearly 30 years to move to Miami. He said the move was to be closer to his parents and his rocket launches at Blue Origin. The timing also suggested another reason: taxes.

In 2022 Washington state imposed a new, 7% capital gains tax on sales of stocks or bonds of more than $250,000. Washington state doesn’t have a personal income tax, so the new levy marked the first time Bezos would face state taxes on his stock sales.

Starting in 1998 Bezos sold billions of dollars worth of Amazon shares almost every year for more than two decades to fund his philanthropy, his space company Blue Origin, and more recently his $500 million mega yacht and a growing collection of mansions purchased with his fiancé Lauren Sanchez.

In 2022, when the tax took effect, Bezos stopped selling. He didn’t sell any Amazon stock in 2022 or 2023, gifting only $200 million of shares at the end of last year.

After his move to Miami, Bezos made up for lost time. Last week, a filing with the SEC revealed that Bezos launched a pre-scheduled stock-selling plan to unload 50 million shares before Jan. 31, 2025. At today’s price, that would total more than $8.7 billion.

Simply put, rapacious state governments trying to steal more money from the people who earned it wind up influencing the decisions of the people who earned that money. Mr Bezos had the freedom to move away from the left coast to the far more sensible Sunshine State, and did.

Florida has no state income tax or a tax on capital gains. So on the $2 billion sale last week, he saved $140 million that he would have paid to Washington state. On the entire sale of 50 million shares over the next year, he will save at least $610 million. And that’s assuming Amazon shares remain flat. If they continue to rise, the value of his shares — and his tax savings — will be even higher.

That’s some major bucks he doesn’t have to give to a left-wing state government, which would doubtlessly spend it on welfare and illegal aliens. Mr Bezos could, and should, spend some of those savings on the Post, to decrease the financial pressure on that august newspaper, at least if his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez doesn’t persuade him to waste more of it on yachts and mansions.

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2 + 2 ≠ 5

Why should the taxpayers be on the hook to pay for other people’s transportation?

The money lines are far down in the story:

The authority projects an annual operating deficit of $240 million beginning next July 1 as the last of its federal pandemic aid is spent, a situation dubbed the “fiscal cliff” that afflicts most transit systems in the United States.

SEPTA and the state’s other public transit agencies are pushing for the legislature to adopt a measure that would give them a greater share of the sales tax to support operations.

Continue reading →

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Molly McGhee and student loan forgiveness A clue: don't flash around how well you live and expect charity from others

Molly McGhee’s library, via this tweet. Click to enlarge.

Molly McGhee describes herself in her Twitter biography as:

200% class rage. Novelist. Debut out Oct 2023: Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind @astrahousebooks. I teach @columbia. prev: @torbooks @fsgbooks. rep: @gelrdrgz

Here’s another view.

That’s pretty awesome for a home library, wouldn’t you say? Miss McGhee certainly thought it awesome enough to put a photo of it on Twitter for her 14.4K followers, as well as an ‘in progress’ photo last September.

I’ve got to say, I have library envy here, especially since much of my library is now on my Kindle! When we moved to our retirement home, we downsized, a lot, because our current house is significantly smaller than the one in Jim Thorpe. One of the first things to go were all of the paperbacks, and some of the hardbacks as well. We have just two bookcases left, a fairly standard sized one, and a smaller one. That’s really all for which we have room!

But the seemingly well-to-do Miss McGhee thinks that it’s horrible that she has to do something really radical like pay off her student loans!

She tweeted:

student loan repayment is more than my rent and due starting in october. @POTUS how do you expect americans to pay this?

student loans and their interests are a class tax on people with working class heritage. It is antithetical to the American dream.

Of course, she does have a way to pay for this!

what if I told everyone I think student debt relief should come from defunding our police state 😙

LOL! Our “police state” seems pretty lawless as you get into a lot of neighborhoods in our major cities, including New York City, where Miss McGhee lives, all of which are governed by mostly liberal Democrats. But somehow, some way, our “police state” has enabled her to build a great looking personal library in her under $1,300 per month apartment in Flatbush — a neighborhood in Brooklyn — and to publish a book which is supposed to be released in October.

What Miss McGhee wants, as she tells us that she earns less than $35,000 a year as an adjunct professor at Columbia University, an Ivy League college, is for other people, working-class people, to pay off her student loans. Of course, she doesn’t particularly respect the working class people who’d have to pay their taxes to pay off her student loans, does she?

One would think that an Ivy League-educated New Yorker would have heard of the word introspection, “a reflective looking inward; an examination of one’s own thoughts and feelings”, and thought that maybe, just maybe, publishing photos of a seemingly great personal library, and trashing the working class people whose taxes would have to make up the difference for the student loans she wants forgiven, might not be great ideas to get the public support for student loan forgiveness.

Perhaps the woman working as a waitress because she couldn’t get a job in her field, sharing in a fifth-floor walkup on 94th Street with four other girls, or the guy in Morgantown, West Virginia, who somehow thought his degree in 17th Century French Literature would get him a job as a professor but missed out in the competition for those jobs, and now working the counter at AutoZone, might generate some sympathy for their ’cause.’ But they’ve forgotten about the people who didn’t get to go to college at all, who are still working as waitresses in diners, or greeters in WalMart, or loader operators at aggregate yards, who might wonder why they should have to pay higher taxes due to the deficits that student loan forgiveness would increase.

But one job that Miss McGhee could never do is sales, because she has proven that her salesmanship skills are not just zero, but less than zero, in flashing around the views of her personal library while begging for people to forgive her debts. And the left wonder why there’s so little support for their great idea.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer is still covering for tax cheat Larry Krasner

We noted, on May 13th, how Fox News had reported, the previous day, that District Attorney Larry Krasner’s private business ventures had not paid all of their taxes. We pointed out how The Philadelphia Inquirer, which had just sent out a begging-for-donations letter touting their “accountability journalism”, had not reported on Mr Krasner’s unpaid taxes.

As of 8:10 PM EDT on Tuesday, May 17th, there’s still no indication in a site search for Larry Krasner that the Inquirer has mentioned it. Well, they may have to do so soon:

It seems that the public, many of whom are loudly complaining about recent assessments which will increase their property tax bills, might not be that thrilled with Mr Krasner not paying what he owes.

I’ll check the Inky again later tonight, and Wednesday morning, to see if they’ve had the guts to tell Philadelphians the truth.

Update: Wednesday, May 18, 2022 | 8:20 AM EDT

As of this time, site searches for Larry Krasner, Krasner tax, and Krasner protest have not indicated any stories about the District Attorney’s tax problems. There was no story on the issue on the main page of the Inquirer’s website. What can anyone conclude other than the newspaper has simply chosen not to report anything negative about George Soros’ stooge?

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Philadelphia Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier doesn’t want her “Black and brown” constituents paying more in property taxes

One great thing about moving back to our home state of Kentucky from Pennsylvania: property taxes are much lower in the Bluegrass State! Property taxes on what was our home in Jim Thorpe are currently listed as $3,228 according to Zillow, while we paid slightly under $400 in property taxes on our current abode last October.

No, $400 is not a typo!

Black and brown homeowners unfairly targeted by Philly’s new property assessments

The Kenney administration cannot claim to center either racial or housing equity if they are making it more difficult for working class and Black and brown homeowners to afford to their homes.

by Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier (D – 3rd District) | Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier (D-Philadelphia). Photo from her city biography page and is a public record. Click to enlarge.

Philadelphia prides itself on its high homeownership rates, especially among working class residents. But the massive property assessment increases that were announced earlier this week present an immediate threat to this fact of life in our city — especially in Black and brown neighborhoods experiencing rapid gentrification. A disproportionate number of these neighborhoods are in the 3rd Councilmanic District, where residential assessments have increased by 50% on average.

I will admit to some amusement that The Philadelphia Inquirer’s use of the Associated Press Stylebook has led to the “Black and brown” formulation when it comes to race. The AP decided that black was to be capitalized when referring to race, but white was not. Continue reading →

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The government spying on bank accounts isn’t going after billionaires; it’s going after Trump voters!

My good friend William Teach noted this article:

    Biden admin backs down on tracking bank accounts with over $600 annual transactions

    by Sarah Kolinovsky and Trish Turner | Tuesday, October 19, 2021 | 5:37 PM

    The Biden administration on Tuesday backed down on a controversial proposal to direct the IRS to collect additional data on every bank account that sees more than $600 in annual transactions, after widespread criticism from Republican lawmakers and banking industry representatives, who said the tax enforcement strategy represented a breach of privacy by the federal government.

    Instead, the administration and Senate Democrats are proposing to raise the threshold to accounts with more than $10,000 in annual transactions, and any income received through a paycheck from which federal taxes are automatically deducted will not be subject to the reporting. Recipients of federal benefits like unemployment and Social Security would also be exempt.

    The IRS would collect the total sum of deposits and withdrawals from bank accounts with more than $10,000 in non-payroll income. Information on individual transactions would not be collected. . . . .

    The changes would exempt millions of Americans from the reporting requirement, and help the IRS target wealthier Americans, especially those who earn money from investments, real estate, and other transactions that are more difficult for the IRS to track.

    “Under the current system, American workers pay virtually all their tax bills while many top earners avoid paying billions in the taxes they owe by exploiting the system. At the core of the problem is a discrepancy in the ways types of income are reported to the IRS: opaque income sources frequently avoid scrutiny while wages and federal benefits are typically subject to nearly full compliance. This two-tiered tax system is unfair and deprives the country of resources to fund core priorities,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

There’s more at the original.

Mr Teach didn’t use the illustration that accompanied the article, but I will, under Fair Use guidelines, because it illustrates the true nature of the proposed surveillance, which the reporters actually recognized, even if they didn’t say so. It isn’t a measure to go after millionaires and billionaires, but after the poorer people who like to deal in cash.

$10,000 in annual transactions is nothing; that would include everybody but the most destitute. What they are looking for is waitresses depositing tips received in cash, commission salesmen who have to do their own taxes, and any businesses that take in cash for payments. The idea that this is going after landlords is ridiculous: they normally get paid via checks, and that becomes documentation. The ‘billionaires and millionaires’? Their tax returns get closely scrutinized, if not completely audited, every year.

Investment income? Almost always in the form of checks or electronic fund transfers.

Of course, the solution to this is simple: if you receive cash, keep it in cash, and spend it in cash.

Let’s imagine, say, a pole building company, that charges you $10,000 to build a garage. You ask if there’s a discount for cash, and the owner says, “Sure, it’ll be $9,500 for cash.”

So, you pay the guy the $9,500 in cash, and he pays his workers for eight hours on the books, but the overtime in cash. Still looks good to the Infernal Revenue Service, right?

But now, he’ll have two choices:

  1. Not accept cash, charge $10,000, plus 6%, or $600, in additional sales tax, and pay his workers entirely on the books, or
  2. Take the $9,500, and pay the workers entirely in cash. He’ll have to be careful that his expenses can be covered by other jobs that are on the books.

Good for the government. The guy who has to pay $10,600 for a garage he could have gotten for $1,100 less? Not so much.

This isn’t any measure to go after billionaires; they aren’t buying things with cash or paying people in cash. Their accountants are paying with checks or EFTs, their businesses being paid with checks or EFTs.

Of course, much of President Trump’s support came from the less well off voters, the people who are far more likely to deal in cash, to pay cash, to ask for discounts for cash. The Democrats are going after Trump voters!

Mr Teach wrote:

    The fact sheet says, “Imagine a taxpayer who reports $10,000 of income; but has $10 million of flows in and out of their bank account. Having this summary information will help flag for the IRS when high-income people under-report their income (and under-pay their tax obligations). This will help the IRS target its enforcement activities on those who are actually evading their tax obligations—decreasing costly and burdensome audits for the vast majority of taxpayers who pay what they owe.”

    Yes, but, it will mean banks have to report your private financial data to the IRS. It won’t say what you purchase, just the overall cash flow.

For the government to delve into your personal finances to see if you are cheating on your taxes, they must have ‘probable cause.’ This surveillance is now going to flag income from which taxes have not been previously deducted as probable cause, when it is nothing of the sort; no one can know whether this stuff will be reported as income on tax forms until the person’s taxes are actually filed, and, in fact, no crime can have been committed until those taxes have been filed.